Kanji: People who got N1 or are now comfortable with reading, did your kanji learning method involve writing practice, and how long did your learning take?

22 comments

1. I only did writing during my college classes (so complete beginner through N3), and after that pretty much only when I hand write letters and cards here in Japan, or notes to coworkers in the office. So I’ll only count the 4 years of college for active handwriting practice

   I’m a slow test taker so I moved to Japan soon after passing N3 and spent the next ~5 years going through N2 and N1 on sight studying/anki flashcards alone, not through handwriting practice

2. Hi, I’m N2 but closer to N1 in terms of vocab (~17k) and kanji (~2800).

   I started manual writing last year (using the ringotan app) but that’s only because I started taking japanese lessons in japan.

   Before that I had already learned 2k+ kanji, only by visual recognition.

   I took around a year between the time I started learning kanji seriously and the time I had learned all 2k joyo kanji.

   For the first 6 months I mainly used WaniKani, before switching to my current routine :

   * Create a deck with the most common X words, or a specific JLPT deck
   * Sort by frequency
   * Learn a set amount of words each day (the sweet spot for me falls somewhere around 50 per day nowadays, but it was less back then).
   * I add every single unknown kanji to a separate deck, that shows the character on one side, and its meanings and on-readings on the back. I count the card as known if I have a good idea of the meaning, and if I know the most common on-reading.
   * Repeat for around a year.

   To make kanji easier to learn, I recommend learning about three things :

   * component names, because knowing what to call each component of a kanji makes it easier to remember
   * the left part often indicates the meaning. 肺、脳、腕、脚 etc. all have a simplified 肉 on the left side, because they’re all body parts. 折、投、撫、all have a simplified 手 on the left because they’re all related to actions you do with your hands.
   * the right part often indicates the on-reading. 生、牲、性、姓 all have セイ as an on reading. 担、胆、旦 all have タン.

   Feel free to ask if you have any other question

3. If I can’t write it – I can rarely remember it. Specially from N5-N2.

4. Took me around 1 year for N1, studying around 4-6 hours everyday ( immersion included ), so around 1500-2000 hours. I did RTK so I manually wrote each kanji once. After that I never wrote again.

5. (Context: I’m currently aiming for N2, but have much better kanji recognition due to a Chinese background. Even though I’ve failed N2 in the past, I’ve aced the kanji/vocab section every single time.)

   * Manual writing was only part of the classroom part of my learning – as soon as I switched to focussing on immersion, I mostly dropped the writing component. Most of my kanji recognition was obtained through reading and Anki.
   * I feel like learning how to write kanji, including stroke order, is only useful in certain circumstances these days, such as if you need the kanji knowledge to learn related languages (e.g. some people learn Japanese and Chinese simultaneously, so they have to be notified of differences between certain characters) or if it helps to drill the kanji into your brain. If you’re just learning the language for reasons which don’t involve writing kanji, then you might even be able to go without learning kanji entirely.
   * Due to the above context, I would’ve assimilated most of it through my Chinese learning and the rest through my Japanese learning. Therefore, I don’t have a specific answer for you in that case.

6. I’m studying for Kanken 4-kyu right now, which is much more involved than the JLPT’s kanji portion, so that shapes how I study.
   My method is going through the list of kanken kanji (ordered by reading) and writing the character, radical, definition, and common compounds + any 4 character compounds. I review every so often with test questions + flash cards.
   It’s WAY more than you need for JLPT, but I find it works well for really remembering kanji.

7. No writing practice at all! I did some writing practice for a few months after I got certified and I’ve already forgotten all of it because I never write  As for how long it took for me to be kanji literate, I never specifically tracked what kanji I was supposed to know, but I knew 2,000+ kanji before I took the N2 test (about 3 years into living in Japan, 1.5 years before passing N1) and the few times I failed N1 before passing it was never the kanji I had an issue with.  If your goal is to pass the N1 test, I absolutely advise skipping writing, or at least putting it off until after you pass. I’m absolutely sure there are reading gains you could be making from writing but it’s not going to be so much that it warrants taking that time out of reading practice imho

8. I just read a lot because I don’t like writing kanji. About 2 and half years of immersion.

9. You can probably pass the N1 without writing practice, but you’ll never be fluent without some amount of writing practice. 

   Also the term for someone who can read but cannot write is… Illiterate. You can be native/ fluent and illiterate, yeah. 

10. If your goal is to quickly pass the JLPT, writing shouldn’t be a priority. Writing is not tested and unless you plan to do a lot of handwriting in your work, it’s just not that important compared to getting lots of input. However, since you mentioned being functional in a Japanese-only work environment, your situation might require spending some time on writing in addition to the JLPT.

    If you do have time to practice writing, I believe it makes you a more well rounded learner and teaches important things like stroke order. There is also growing research that points to handwriting being better for long-term recognition than using a keyboard. If you use a resource like RTK to lay some groundwork, you will have a more native-like understanding of kanji and their components.

    I’m glad I spent time writing out a lot of kanji both as an early learner and in my college classes, but being able to write kanji well was one of my key motivators and one of the most enjoyable and unique aspects of the language for me, so it was a no-brainer to spend time on that out of personal fulfillment. But I also had extrinsic motivators like written kanji quizzes and tests that I refused to miss any points on. 🙂

    After getting N2 and then my degree, though, I spent less time on writing and more on grinding towards N1, mostly since I was working full-time and no longer a student, which required me to be a little more efficient with my time.

11. I’m fluent in reading and worked as a professional JP to EN translator. I can only handwrite about 200 Kanji from memory that I learnt some 20 years ago when I first got into learning Japanese. I can type Japanese fluently however.

12. I learned to recognise kanji through recognition RTK in 3 months at 25 per day and then just learned all words in kanji through flash cards reinforced by reading. Never did any writing and can not write. I don’t want to learn hand writing because I feel like I will forget it if I don’t keep using it and I don’t think I will use it.

13. I got N1 this year and can read novels fine. I learnt writing alongside reading, and can read over 3500 kanji I think, and write most of them from memory.

    I only did jlpt this year for certificate, didn’t have interest in it ever. so can’t say how long it takes just to be able to pass, but I studied for 5 years now

14. I just passed the n1 in July and I regularly read Japanese books. I don’t know how to write a single kanji nor did I ever use a kanji learning method.

15. im at 10K+ vocab , 2K+ Kanji & I didn’t write a Kanji once, anki and watching everything with Japanese subtitles

16. I don’t have N1 cause I never took the JLPT but I’m consider myself at a level where I can comfortably read most stuff (including newspapers) without problems.

    I didn’t touch kanji for the first 2-3 years of my studies. I just learned words, I focused on learning the **sounds** of words either by reading the furigana on top of the kanji (when reading manga) or listening to audiovisual content (anime and videogames). Kanji to me were just scribbles that slowly acquired some shape in my mind after seeing them accosted to certain sounds and words.

    Eventually, since I had never done any specific kanji or vocab studies (I wasn’t using anki much), I realized my ability to read was lagging behind a lot compared to my ability to listen, so I started doing a kanji-focused deck (the previous version of [this one](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1833474130)) and for every new kanji I studied I looked on kanjipedia and jisho to find useful words (usually words I already knew from immersion) to associate some actual practical usage/imagery in my head. I avoided any resource that used English keywords or meanings, I was already relatively comfortable with a somewhat large (for me at the time) vocabulary as someone who immersed a lot in audiovisual content (I’d consider myself maybe around N3 at the time).

    Going through the deck, I noticed I already knew about 800-900 kanji by just having consumed a lot of media with furigana (stuff like 私, etc, obviously) but there were a few that I knew were very common because I’d seen them a lot but I could never naturally pick them up on my own so doing a kanji deck helped. I went through all joyo kanji (so N1 level / beginning of highschool Japanese level) in about 6-7 months at 10 new kanji a day.

    After those 7 months, my ability to read got much better and caught up to my listening and from then on honestly it was just reading a lot and looking up new words as I came across them. I still do some new kanji every once in a while in my deck when I am bored and I keep up with my reviews, and so far I have about 3700 kanji learned (in the deck).

    Personally, I think that the way I did it was really good but I am clearly biased. I think studying kanji is much easier and more useful once you already know the language and can relate those kanji and words with actual experience. You don’t need much (like N3ish level as I was) but there’s enough resources out there where you can easily immerse without worrying about kanji (manga with furigana, audiovisual content, yomitan, texthookers, etc) that I think it was good for me to just pick up words naturally and then associate them with kanji first via exposure and then fill in the gaps with methodical study later (this is also how native speakers learn them in school too).

    As a note, I never learned to handwrite, I struggle handwriting hiragana, let alone kanji lol.

17. I went all-in on kanji about 10 months ago and am now about to finish up the jouyou plus some extras I picked up on the way. By all-in I mean readings + meanings + writing with perfect recall.

    I didn’t exactly “study” Japanese before that, so I can’t tell you what level I was at exactly, but I reckon I would have failed N3 a year ago while I 180/180’d N2 in July and am also expecting to pass N1 in December. Might try my luck with Kanken 3 in October as well.

    So while I can’t directly compare it with other study methods, here are some things I can tell you:

    – Already having a sizeable vocab speeds it up considerably. It’s much easier to remember characters if you can connect them to a word you’re already familiar with straight away.

    – The time investment is generally overstated. Besides phases where I quickly “dumped” a lot of new kanji, my daily reviews ranged somewhere around 15-30. There were also several multi-week breaks where I basically didn’t touch kanji at all, and phases where I “slacked” and didn’t add any new ones. Could have probably been done in closer to half a year than one if I’d really knuckled down.

    – Don’t do handwriting binges. I fucked up my wrist doing that.

    – I used the school grade / kanken order to give me structure. It might not be the “most useful” one, but that doesn’t really matter if you’re gonna learn them all anyway. Saves you the time and effort of manually curating lists, and you can use kanken learning material/apps to practice.

    – It can improve your Japanese in ways you didn’t expect. Remember new vocab *way* faster now, and am much less likely to mix up similar sounding words.

    – My reading basically went from 0 to 100. Still slow (some 200-300 characters per minute) because I hardly ever read longer texts, but when I do it’s very smooth.

    My routine for the past 6 months or so has been the Kanji Study app with SRS feature unlocked for daily reviews and introducing new characters, plus an Anki jouyou kanji deck I use for actual handwriting reviews 1-3 times per week.

18. I cannot comfortably read many things, but things like Twitter, YouTube, YouTube comments. blogs. blog threads, 2ch/5ch, Discord, many 日常内容 JP subtitles, live stream chat, etc. I can read very comfortably without any look ups.

    Did not do much individually kanji study except learn all the common components (220+) and then reinforce that by using radical look up for words. Rest was entirely through vocabulary and I know in the range of 1800 kanji at the moment. I cannot write all of kana let alone kanji.

19. I never tried N1, but I’m very good at reading (can read native material at faster than talking speed with 99+% recognition), and I stopped practicing writing after the first 300 or so.

    The main problem with not practicing writing is that sometimes you mix up similar kanji when reading, but it’s usually clear from context. Oh, and also you can’t handwrite, but that doesn’t come up much.

    I’ve lost track of how much time I spent reading/studying. Well over a thousand hours of reading (not counting textbooks and beginner/intermediate materials).

    The main things that helped me take things to the next level were a) working through the core 10k Anki deck, and b) reading, reading, reading. It was painful at first, because I had to stop to look up so many words, but I gradually got faster and faster, and needed to look up less and less.

20. mfw I have N1 but can’t easily read a newspaper (not used to politics/policy jargon and politician names)

    To answer your question though, I cheated by having some prior knowledge of kanji from chinese (I’m bad at chinese), but besides that I just read various things, not necessarily novels, just whatever I found online, and setting my phone/games to Japanese. I tried stuff like anki/writing practice but quit quickly because it was too boring. My kanji writing lags behind my reading by a lot even now because of this. It took me roughly 3 years for N2 and 3 more years for N1, though I slacked a ton and you can definitely go a lot faster if you actually consistently spend time studying.

21. Only really wrote by hand while taking classes in college. After that lived and worked in Japan for a bit and got N1 after a couple years or so. In the real world you mostly just use the computer so handwriting isn’t too important. My writing at this point is pretty weak 🙂

22. I took three years of college classes, so yeah, we had to learn to write.

    Those three years ostensibly ended somewhere between N2 and N1 level–after that all I did on my own was read, mine, and anki. I’ll admit that my knowledge of those kanji I learned on my own often feels less solid than the ones I learned while I was taking classes; not writing, not learning them in a more structured context, not taking things slowly, not being rigorously tested, etc…could all have something to do with that, but it could also be that a lot of them are simply less frequently encountered, even if I’m reading Japanese on an everyday basis.